This question has a misplaced focus. Parents have children in order to bless them – not ourselves. We are to love and nurture them as well as to delight in their development. The Bible is full of admonitions to instruct our children in righteousness.
"Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding…keep my commandments, and live." Proverbs 4:1,4.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it," Proverbs 22:6.
However, nowhere in the scriptures does it tell us to train a child in order to make the parents look good.
It is true that an obedient child does reflect well on his parents, but we are not to use our children for our own ends.
When we begin to focus on how our children make us look, we will have problems. For example, God never looked at how Satan's disobedience would reflect on His parenting abilities! God is a perfect parent, yet Satan chose to become evil.
Parenting is very humbling. Our children will certainly behave incorrectly and even embarrass us. How we respond reflects our own Christian maturity. Our response should be with love and wisdom – Ephesians 4:26,15 (NLT), "don’t sin by letting anger control you…we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ."
It's always a good idea to include our children in our Christian activities. We encourage them to memorize scripture, sing hymns, participate in Bible plays. But we do this to bless them – not to enhance our ministries.
